“This bill would ensure that the most
vulnerable individuals, those already struggling in the face of
homophobia and transphobia, are not targeted and subjected to a
practice that medical practitioners deem harmful and inappropriate,”
Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of Equality Illinois, the state's largest LGBT
advocate, said in an emailed statement.

Opponents of the bill argue that it
would harm children.

“Cassidy's proposed legislation is
destructive, unethical, and dishonest,” the Illinois Family
Institute said in a statement. “It depends on unproven,
non-factual, non-evidence-based assumptions that even homosexual
scholars reject but the public continues to buy hook, line and
sinker. The ultimate motivation behind this legislation is to
promote the Leftist assumptions of adult homosexuals who seek to wipe
disapproval of homosexual acts from the face of the planet even if
doing [so] requires deception, harms children, undermines parental
rights, and corrodes fundamental First Amendment speech and religious
liberty.”

In August, New Jersey became the second
state after California to ban the practice.